April 27th, 2018

Oh well… she had to make some decision and I think she did an excellent job of weighing all the factors, getting into the details in a very difficult case, and come up with a Recommendation that pisses everyone off! That’s something that takes a LOT of work and is very hard to do!

Here’s a post on it with an insightful/inciteful framing of the decision and what it means:

My take is that O’Reilly laid out the Leech Lake Band’s sovereignty and power and the lay of the land as it exists now — the easements are there now, allowing Enbridge to use the land until 2029. This recommendation sets the stage for the easement renegotiation in 2029, where the Band has power to say “NO!” and Enbridge is very afraid of that, facing either outright refusal or greatly increased easement payment as the obvious outcome. This Recommendation, and use of the existing easement gives Leech Lake greater leverage going forward, and might even move those easement negotiations up in time. If that renegotation is a decade in the future, Enbridge will also by then be operating in a very different world than exists right now, with decreased oil use and demand. O’Reilly also noted that if a new corridor were used with this, given state non-proliferation, Enbridge would logically seek to use that corridor for all its pipelines going forward.

Along this line (but note that LaDuke, Honor the Earth, is the one quoted, and there are no quotes from Leech Lake or Fond du Lac tribal officials, who should be the ones weighing in here):

In a statement Tuesday, April 24, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe described the recommendation as “anti-sovereignty” and said that it “puts undue burden on the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe to hold the risk of the pipeline replacement and to revoke the permit.”

“The judge has made this horrific recommendation without even holding a single ALJ hearing on the Leech Lake Reservation and gave a recommendation on a route that has not had the same level of environmental review,” wrote Ben Benoit, the band’s environmental director.

Once more with feeling — If you have comments, objections, there’s been a notice issued regarding submission of “Exceptions” which are due May 9, 2018: